Two centuries ago, before Lewis and Clark went in search of a passage to the Pacific Ocean, David Thompson paddled the Columbia River, worked to establish a trading alliance with Mandan Indians and made maps of North America that ultimately became the guide for explorers who followed him.
A British-born fur trader, Thompson traveled more than 50,000 miles across North America. He learned native languages, made celestial observations, counted aboriginal populations and documented his discoveries in journals flourished with his own sketches.
A monument near this now-abandoned town commemorates the man historians believe to be one of the greatest explorers of North America. His name is inscribed on the pedestal of a 6-foot-high granite globe on the hilly banks of the Souris River.
But while the route of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark is full of visitors, the path leading to the Thompson memorial is nearly untrodden. The memorial, one of 56 state historic sites in North Dakota, goes unnoticed, except by bees that buzz the site from a nearby apiary.
It is "one of the oddest and most forlorn historical monuments in this part of the country," said Tom Isern, a professor of history at North Dakota State University. "(Thompson) is not in the popular consciousness of the people of North Dakota whatsoever, or most anyone else for that matter."
The rare visitor to the memorial learns that the geographer and astronomer passed through in 1797 and 1798 and is credited with mapping more than 1.2 million square miles of North America. His map of the Canadian west measures 10 feet by 7 feet.
"Thompson traveled farther and knew more than anyone else of that time," said Toronto-based writer D'Arcy Jenish. "He had a mind like a search engine."
Jenish said Thompson mapped most of the country west of Hudson Bay and Lake Superior to the Columbia River's source, and the length of the river to the Pacific Ocean.
"He was the first white person to paddle the entire Columbia River, and he was probably the first person, period," said Jenish, whose biography of Thompson, called "Epic Wanderer," was first published in Canada last year.
Thompson could become less obscure this summer, with the U.S. publication of the book.
Isern said Thompson practiced "adroit diplomacy" and knew when to "shrink from a fight, thereby living to explore again ... and make maps for his country."
He "never fired a shot in anger," Jenish said.
Thompson, who worked for the Hudson Bay Company and later its rival, the Northwest Company, traveled through present-day North Dakota at least six years before the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Northwest. Jenish said Thompson and his party of about a dozen French-Canadians were sent to North Dakota partly to establish a trading alliance with Mandan Indians, who lay at the center of trade along the Upper Missouri River. The closest Thompson ever came to death during his three decades of travel was in North Dakota, during the harsh winter of 1797-98.
Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-05 at Fort Mandan, near present-day Washburn, as they explored the territory acquired through the Louisiana Purchase at the request of President Thomas Jefferson.
Historians believe Lewis and Clark used Thompson's maps on their expedition.
A map of the Upper Missouri River drawn by Thompson or based on his surveys was copied by Lewis for the first leg of the expedition. Jefferson made a notation on the map: "Bend of the Missouri, Long. 101 25' - Lat. 47 32' by Mr. Thompson, astronomer to the N.W. Company in 1798."
North Dakota and other states are holding "signature" events through 2006, to mark the nation's 200th anniversary celebration of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Jenish said Thompson should be celebrated more than the two American explorers.
"Americans have the ability to turn history into myth, and Lewis and Clark are the epitome of that," he said. "David Thompson is not a myth. He was not an explorer in the classic mold.
"Lewis and Clark and other well-known explorers went on linear journeys, from point A to point B and back to point A," Jenish said. "Thompson went everywhere."
North Dakota historian Walt Bailey said Thompson's relative obscurity in the United States is part provincialism.
"American historians write history about Americans," Bailey said. "The Canadians have done a much more thorough job of recognizing David Thompson.
"You can't deal with North Dakota history without dealing with David Thompson," Bailey said.
Thompson died "penniless, blind and obscure" near Montreal in 1857, at the age of 87, Jenish said.
He remained undistinguished until his autobiography was found and published in 1916.
The Great Northern Railway gave the land for the memorial to the state of North Dakota, and nine years later (in 1925) the large granite sphere was placed at Verendrye. The monument, and others honoring explorers along the Great Northern line, was erected at the behest of railway President Ralph Budd as a tourist promotion, said Jim Larson, a University of North Dakota professor and railroad historian.
Jenish said he was unaware of the monument for Thompson in North Dakota. Memorials have been erected in Canada over the years, he said, but none as early as the one in McHenry County, in north-central North Dakota.
"Whoever did that was very much ahead of the curve. Somebody obviously was on top of the fact that an exceptional expedition had taken place," Jenish said.
It was the first public act of recognition for Thompson, who died 68 years earlier.
Rod Holth has run a 3,000-acre potato farm near the memorial for 16 years.
"I've never met anybody yet that's come by to look at it," Holth said. Even he has never taken a close look at the site.
Joe Leier, 81, of the nearby town of Karlsruhe, remembers going out to the memorial for school picnics. He said children from the area studied Thompson and other explorers. Leier and other members of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars have kept up the grounds of the monument for years.
"We used to take pride in who we were _ our history," Leier said. "I don't think we have that anymore. And I think we've lost something."
